As funding shrinks but needs grow, where is the future of a generation growing up waiting to return?

Tauhidur Rahman, Dhaka: 

The last week of August 2017. Within the following weeks, more than 700,000 Rohingya crossed the border into Bangladesh. Some arrived carrying children in their arms, some with elderly parents, while others walked for days to reach safety. They had left behind their homes, land and possessions—with nothing but the hope of staying alive in safety. At the time, we saw it as an acute humanitarian emergency. Nine years later, that emergency has become a protracted reality. But perhaps the biggest change over these nine years is not in the number of refugees—it is in the age of a generation. A child who was one or two years old in 2017 is now ten or eleven. A child who arrived in Bangladesh at the age of five is now a fourteen-year-old adolescent. A child who may have crossed the border holding onto his or her mother’s hand is now old enough to ask questions about the future.

So, as the Rohingya refugee crisis reaches its ninth year, our question should not be limited to: When will they return? The more difficult question is: Who will they be when they return?

 From an Emergency to a Protracted Reality

The scale of Bangladesh’s humanitarian responsibility towards the Rohingya refugees since 2017 has been enormous. As the population has grown, so have the needs. The 2025 Joint Response Plan (JRP) aimed to reach around 1.48 million people, including Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char, as well as affected host communities in Ukhiya and Teknaf. Around this vast population, an unprecedented humanitarian effort has taken shape in Cox’s Bazar. Food, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, shelter, protection, child protection, the safety of women and adolescents, education, livelihoods and skills development—the response has brought together the Government of Bangladesh, the United Nations, international and national NGOs, and local communities.

In 2025, 113 partner organisations were involved in the JRP, nearly half of them national organisations. For nine years, the primary purpose of this enormous effort has been to keep people alive, protect them and ensure the minimum conditions for a life with dignity. But when a crisis becomes protracted, a fundamental question emerges: Can a humanitarian response remain focused on survival when an entire generation has grown up in displacement?

Funding Is Shrinking, but Needs Are Not

The question becomes even more important when we look at international funding. In 2018, the Joint Response Plan sought around US$951 million and received approximately US$688 million—about 72 per cent of the requirement. In the following years, funding generally remained around 70–75 per cent of the requested amount. But gradually, that proportion began to fall. In 2024, against a requirement of US$852.4 million, around US$581 million was funded—about 68 per cent. In 2025, the requirement rose to US$934.5 million, but by the end of the year, only around 38 per cent had been funded. The situation is even more difficult in 2026. The requirement has now been set at US$710.5 million—26 per cent lower than the previous year’s appeal. This reduction does not mean that the needs have disappeared. Rather, the response itself has had to narrow its priorities, with limited resources increasingly focused on essential and life-saving services.

An uncomfortable reality is becoming increasingly clear:

The crisis is getting older.
The population is growing.
The nature of needs is changing.
But the funding envelope is shrinking.

The question, then, is not simply how much funding we received. The question is: when resources are shrinking, which needs are we being forced to leave behind? Education? Skills development? Protection? Or the future of a generation that has spent nine years growing up waiting to return?

What Happens to That Child Nine Years Later?

One of the most complex dimensions of the Rohingya refugee crisis is education. In the early stages of the emergency, temporary learning centres were necessary and practical. Later, the introduction of the Myanmar Curriculum sought to maintain children’s connection with their own language and education system. One of its key purposes is to ensure that, if safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation becomes possible, children can continue their education in Myanmar. The objective is understandable.  But nine years later, the question is harder: If the future we are preparing them for remains uncertain, how well are we preparing them for the future they are living through today?

For a fourteen-year-old adolescent, primary-level education alone is not enough. They need age-appropriate education, opportunities to progress to secondary level, skills, technological knowledge and the ability to make decisions about their own future. Because the child who was a “new arrival” nine years ago is now an adolescent. In a few years, that adolescent will become a young adult. And when a large young population remains excluded from education, skills development, work and meaningful engagement for years, frustration, instability and a sense of having no future can grow. That vacuum can increase the risks of crime, drug use, trafficking, violence and other forms of exploitation. The consequences will not remain confined to the camps; over time, they can affect host communities and Bangladesh more broadly. Education, therefore, is not simply a humanitarian sector. It is an investment in social stability. Repatriation Is the Solution—but what happens until then? Bangladesh’s position is clear: the lasting solution to the Rohingya crisis is safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation. The international community broadly shares the same position. But the reality is that Myanmar’s political and security situation remains unfavourable for repatriation. Nine years on, the question of return remains trapped within a complex political and geopolitical equation. This leaves Bangladesh with a dual responsibility. On the one hand, diplomatic efforts at the international and regional levels must be strengthened to advance repatriation. The Rohingya crisis must not remain confined to discussions of humanitarian assistance; it needs to be raised more forcefully on international political platforms. Questions of security, citizenship, rights and dignity must remain at the centre of international discussions about a safe return to Myanmar.

On the other hand, we cannot keep an entire generation on hold while waiting for repatriation. The right to return is fundamental. But nine years of waiting is also nine years of a person’s life. Those years cannot simply be spent receiving assistance and waiting for a political solution. People need opportunities to learn, develop skills and build their capabilities. This is where Bangladesh has an opportunity to think differently. The current Joint Response Plan itself recognises the importance of livelihoods, employment, skills development and capacity building for both refugees and host communities. In 2022, the Government of Bangladesh and the United Nations also endorsed a framework for skills development for refugees and host communities. The foundation, therefore, already exists. What is needed now is a little more ambition in how we think about it.

Rohingya refugees should not be seen only as recipients of relief, but as people with skills and capabilities. A young person who has learned tailoring should not have to stop at receiving a training certificate. Can that person be connected to a market? A young person trained in electrical work, mobile phone servicing, agriculture, technical trades or digital skills—how can those capabilities be put to productive use? Of course, this is not a question of unrestricted access to Bangladesh’s labour market. It could instead be part of a regulated, policy-driven and authorised framework for skills development that remains compatible with eventual repatriation. In some areas, even productive activities could potentially be developed within the camps, allowing products made using refugees’ skills to be connected with local markets under clearly defined policies. Such approaches could, on the one hand, strengthen people’s sense of self-reliance and, on the other, reduce some degree of dependence on humanitarian assistance.

Current skills-development initiatives also recognise the importance of transferable skills, digital literacy and skills relevant to the green economy—capabilities that could be useful whether people eventually return to Myanmar or continue to live in displacement. Perhaps this is where we need to rethink our approach.

Preparing people for repatriation and building their capabilities while they wait should not be seen as competing priorities. They should move forward together.

There is another point we need to remember. The Rohingya population is not only a humanitarian responsibility for Bangladesh; over the long term, it has become a major social reality as well. The host communities in Cox’s Bazar have been carrying out the burden of this crisis for nine years. Markets, the environment, education, health, employment and local services have all come under pressure. So, just as support is needed for Rohingya refugees, long-term investment is also needed for host communities.

At the same time, helping young refugees become skilled and productive means reducing future risks.

A skilled young person is an opportunity.
An unemployed and frustrated young person is a risk.

Policymakers need to recognise this distinction now.  For nine years, Bangladesh has provided refuge. Humanitarian organisations have worked. The international community has provided funding. But international funding is now shrinking, while a durable solution to the crisis remains distant. Simply continuing with the same approach for another year will not be enough. We need to do three things together.

First, Bangladesh must strengthen its diplomatic and international advocacy for repatriation—not allow the issue to remain confined to a humanitarian agenda, but ensure that it remains part of the global political conversation.

Second, until repatriation becomes possible, the younger generation of Rohingya refugees must be prepared through education, skills, technology and regulated livelihood opportunities.

Third, host communities must receive equal attention throughout this process so that coexistence and social stability can be sustained.

This is not a proposal for the permanent integration of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh. Nor is it a proposal to keep an entire generation in limbo while waiting for repatriation. It is about seeing both things together: preparing people for return while making the years of waiting meaningful. Because, ultimately, the Rohingya crisis is not only a refugee crisis. It is a generational crisis.

The child who arrived in Bangladesh in his or her mother’s arms in 2017 is no longer a child nine years later. That child is now an adolescent. And in a few years, that adolescent will become a young adult. So, as the crisis enters its ninth year, perhaps our most important question is not: “When will they return?” But rather: “What are we allowing them to become while they wait?”

If we allow them only to wait, the crisis will continue long after its ninth anniversary. But if we educate them, equip them with skills, connect them to safe and meaningful opportunities, protect their dignity, and at the same time continue global political pressure for their safe and voluntary repatriation, then perhaps these nine years of waiting will not become nine years of a lost generation.

The future of this generation is therefore not only the future of the Rohingya. It is also the future of Bangladesh.

The author Tauhidur Rahman is humanitarian worker from Bangladesh

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